


Harlan County Nights

by SylvanWitch



Series: Nights Like These [3]
Category: Justified, Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 18:51:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He isn't expecting to run into Dean here, in his own backyard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harlan County Nights

**Author's Note:**

> This is set pre-series for _Justified_ and circa S4 for _Supernatural_ , but there are no spoilers for either show.
> 
> Also, a big thanks to my beta, chemm80. All remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

What Raylan remembers best about his Aunt Adelaide—Addie to friends and kin she liked, him included—was her shine, pure as light and cutting as a blade when it went down. She’d offer it in jelly jars, their incongruous shapes leaving impressions on his sweaty palm as he gripped the glass the first time he’d ever tasted hard liquor.

He’d liked Aunt Addie, not only for the way she’d taught him to drink but for the times she’d let him climb up into her crawlspace and sit there, silent and still, wishing away whatever family horror had chased him out of the Holler to begin with.

If he hadn’t liked her, he wouldn’t be in Harlan County now, or anywhere near Kentucky, if he could help it. Her funeral had brought him back, Helen’s words over the phone just the right blend of sorrow and guilt. She’d always had a knack for bringing him to heel.

So when she’d drawn him into the kitchen at the wake under the auspices of helping her carve the pig and had said, low in his ear, “There’s trouble up back of Addie’s place,” he’d had no choice but to check it out.

Now, standing in the breathing dark of a moonless Kentucky mountain night, listening to the distant baying of dogs—big ones, by the sound of them, and not the coon-hunting kind—he regrets letting Helen get close enough for suggesting things.

With a resigned sigh, he closes the door on his rental, checks his gun to be sure he’s got one ready up, and starts to climb. Two hundred yards from the dirt road, Addie’s familiar cabin looms out of the darkness, a benevolent presence, and he wishes for a fierce, breathless moment that he could stop in and sit awhile, sip some of her shine, poke his head into the crawlspace where he’d found comfort so often when he was young.

Shaking off the unexpected melancholy, Raylan skirts between the wall and the well-pump and finds the narrow path she’d always used for dumping slop-buckets and hunting for huckleberries further up the mountainside.

She must’ve been using it to the end, he thinks, the trail clear in the starlight filtering through from overhead, and as his breath starts to come with some effort, the dogs take up their belly-shaking baying again.

Dogs like that are only good for one thing in these parts—guarding something the owner doesn’t want found. Back in Addie’s youth that might’ve been a still. She’d often recalled with a kind of gleeful ferocity the day the Revenuers came for her daddy. “Three men,” she’d drawl, relish evident in every word, “And not a one of ‘m ever seen ‘r heard from agin.”

Raylan shudders at the sudden image of stumbling over a pile of old bones and wishes he hadn’t thought of that particular tale. Whatever the dogs are guarding, it’s not shine. Meth, probably, or the makings for it. Maybe a route through the mountains used by dealers and their humps.

Best case scenario, they’re a feral pack let loose from some unfortunate farmer who couldn’t afford to feed them anymore.

Raylan doesn’t believe in best cases these days.

He’s a half-mile back in the deep woods, close enough to the dogs now that he can hear them huffing between barks. Years of undisturbed deadfall are making slippery work for his boots, and he’s once again recovering from a slide when he sees a flash of light. He hunkers down, pulls and aims his gun, allowing automatically for the incline and waiting to see what’s coming.

When there’s no other movement, he creeps ahead, cursing the footing and his fool notion that this was going to be an easy errand. 

He’s easing up on a downed tree, its shorn roots clawing the air over his head, when he feels the cold shiver of muzzle metal against the back of his neck.

“Hold it right there, partner,” a familiar voice says, and Raylan snorts and shakes his head, ignoring his orders to stand still.

“Partner? You from Texas now? Last time I checked, it was Kansas.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Hereabouts, they just call me Raylan,” he notes, holstering his gun as he pivots to take in Dean Winchester, who hasn’t been quite so trusting about his own gun.

“We’re all friends here,” he continues, nodding at the gun. There’s just enough light to make out Dean’s eyes, gleaming wide and a little wild in what little starlight makes it through the canopy.

Dean drops his hand but doesn’t put the gun away. “You can’t stay here.”

Raylan shrugs as if a walk in the woods is just the thing he does in the pitch dark of a warm spring night. “I’m not the one trespassing.”

“No, I mean it’s not safe. You have to go. Now!”

The urgency alerts Raylan to the danger, and his gun is back in his hand before he can actually formulate the notion that he should draw it. The baying sets up louder than before, closer than it was moments ago, and he falls in beside Dean, their stances identical, taking a bead on whatever’s about to bound over the rise.

“You got silver in that?” 

“What?”

“Silver. Are they silver bullets?”

It takes Raylan too long to put it together, what Dean does—who he is—and why he’d be asking such a stupid question, and then he’s shooting at two black shapes hurtling out of the underbrush just ahead, so black that they seem like parts of the night come alive.

He fires steadily into the mass of the one on his side, but though Dean’s target whines and flips backward and skids downhill in a loose tangle of lifeless limbs, his just keeps coming.

“Down!” Dean shouts, shoving Raylan aside. His boots aren’t made for traction, and as his feet slide out from under him, he has just enough presence of mind to engage the safety before his shoulder is making contact with the hard ground.

Dean fires once, twice, backpedals and lunges to the left, leading the beast away from Raylan and then sliding to a stop to adjust his aim.

He’s not going to make it, Raylan has time to think, but before the wash of horror has time to pool like pond ice in his belly, Dean’s muzzle flashes a third time, the monster gives an unholy shriek, and they go down in a welter of deadweight and swearing.

By now, Raylan’s back on his feet, but he’s swaying, the sickening pain of his dislocated shoulder radiating down his spine, and he has to take his time walking over to Dean, gun in his off hand, right arm tucked in close to his body.

“You alright?” he asks, keeping a respectful distance just in case the thing isn’t dead.

“No, I’m not alright! I’ve got two hundred pounds of stinking dog on top of me!”

Raylan holsters his gun a little awkwardly and uses his good arm to try to lever the animal off of Dean. After what feels like an hour of sweating and swearing, Dean rolls free and rises wearily, stretching out a kink in his back and giving Raylan the gimlet eye.

“You alright?” 

Raylan considers shrugging, thinks better of it, and says, “Lend a hand?” instead.

Dean doesn’t hesitate, and by his quick, efficient motions, the way he muscles the joint back into its socket without wincing, Raylan’s reminded of how the other man grew up, the kinds of things he’s seen. He’s distracted from his agony by the momentary thought that after all this time, Dean must have some new scars. Then, he’s mostly swallowing back bile and trying not to sob.

“Son of a bitch!” he rasps after a few minutes of successfully not humiliating himself.

“Yeah,” says Dean sympathetically. Then, “Guess you won’t be much help in the dragging and burning department.” 

“Seriously?”

“You want me to leave ‘em here so Darryl and his other brother Darryl can find ‘em?”

“Good point. What are they, anyway?”

“Black dogs.”

“I can see that.” And he can practically hear Dean’s eyes rolling.

“Black dogs are harbingers of doom. In lore, they foreshadow the coming of death. In reality, they’re usually the ones causing it. Strange though—they don’t usually run in pairs.” Raylan can just make out Dean’s “Oh well” shrug, and then he’s trudging back up the mountainside, calling, “Stay here. I’ll be back,” over his shoulder.  
Since the threat seems to have been eliminated, Raylan figures he can relax a little, and he leans against a tree to catch his breath and think about the chances of Dean showing up in Harlan County at exactly the same time as he’s in town for a funeral.

The staggering odds make him dizzy—or maybe it’s the throbbing ache in his shoulder—so Raylan practices standing very still and breathing slowly. That settles his protesting stomach, and by the time Dean returns, army duffel over one shoulder, shovel in his gun hand, Raylan figures he might be able to do his part.

“We have to bury them?”

Dean shakes his head. “No, but with all these dead leaves, we need a firebreak if we don’t want to start a fire on this mountain. I want to hide the evidence, not create a whole other crime scene.”

“Guess it’s good you’ve got the law on your side, then,” Raylan observes.

“Yeah…about that…” Dean leans the shovel against the trunk of a tree and climbs back to the first dog he’d killed, grunting and muttering under his breath as he drags its body down to the second dog’s. The activity gives Raylan time to consider how much he’s going to say. He’s not so sure it’s a good idea to let a man like Dean know so much about where he comes from. Then again, Dean thinking Raylan’s stalking him isn’t going to work, either.

“My Aunt Addie’s place is just down the mountain,” he says at last, surprising himself. He hadn’t really decided what he’d been going to say before it came out. “My Aunt Helen asked me to check out some trouble up back of Addie’s place. I followed the sound of the dogs.”

“You’re from around here?” Dean sounds surprised.

“Born and raised.”

“Huh,” is all Dean says in answer. He’s busy now digging a firebreak around the bodies, and Raylan does what he can with his off hand and a broken tree branch. Once that’s done, Dean brings out a can of lighter fluid and an old-fashioned Zippo, which he flicks to life with expert ease.

The whoomph of the bodies catching is loud in the quiet dark, and Raylan takes a step or two back at the sudden flare of heat.

They watch in silence for while as the bodies burn, backing away as the corpses begin to smoke and stink, and Raylan catches Dean’s eye more than once as they size each other up. Now and then, one or the other stomps out a stray cinder, but otherwise it’s quiet, restful almost, if it weren’t for what they’re burning. 

“Been a long time,” he says eventually, as the smoldering remains start to collapse in on themselves. “You look…” He’d meant to say, “good,” but all that comes to him is “older,” and he’s pretty sure that no matter the age difference between them, Dean doesn’t want to hear that. He settles on, “the same,” and hopes Dean doesn’t hear the hesitation.

By his dry huff of a laugh, Raylan guesses Dean hears everything he didn’t mean to say and probably a few things he should have.

“It’s been a rough couple of months.”  
His tone alone suggests that Dean is indulging in egregious understatement.

“You want a drink?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“I know just the place,” Raylan answers, picking up the shovel in his good hand and nodding back down the way he came.

Dean kicks out the last of the embers, shoulders his bag, and gestures for Raylan to lead the way.

Down is easier than up, which might be the only reason Raylan makes any way. Dean follows him without a word, almost without a sound, in fact, and Raylan would be impressed if he weren’t busy being embarrassed. These woods were his playground as a kid, but it’s been a long time since he’s spent any time in the mountains, and he’s painfully winded by the time they reach Addie’s place.

He opens the generator shed and turns it on as they pass it and then leads Dean up onto Addie’s narrow little porch.

The key is where he expects to find it, hooked around a slantwise nail dead center of the top door frame. The familiar creaking of the unoiled screendoor hinges makes him wince at the way it carries and then makes him lonesome just a little.

“Make yourself at home,” he offers, waving Dean into the living room that runs long and narrow across the front of the cabin. He heads for the pump closet—Addie’s only concession to electricity in the house had been the water pump; she’d preferred what she called “nat’ral light” to see by—and flips the on switch, holding his breath until the old motor stutters and chugs into arrhythmic protest. 

When he’s done washing up in the room his aunt had always insisted on calling the “water closet,” he comes back to the living room to find Dean sprawled on Addie’s beat up old Chesterfield, knees apart, feet spraddled, head back and mouth open. It’s too dark to tell if he’s drooling, but there’s a whistling snore that Raylan refuses to find endearing. He gives Dean’s near boot a kick as he passes on the way to the kitchen, lights an oil lamp to the sound of Dean stretching noisily, and takes two jelly jars down from the shelf where his aunt had always kept them for company.

“Jug’s behind you,” he says, indicating a cupboard next to the stove as Dean sidles in.

Dean retrieves the shine with a low whistle, appraises the oily purl of the fluid as it sloshes up the neck of the glass jar. “Lethal,” he remarks with an admiring smile, passing the jar over.

“That it is,” Raylan confirms as he pours them each a generous portion.

“To getting your monster,” Raylan toasts, tipping his glass toward Dean’s.

“And your man,” Dean adds, clinking rims and raising a suggestive eyebrow.

“Subtle.” Raylan gives Dean an assessing look intended to suggest that the hunter is making assumptions.

“Yeah, well, you’re a sure thing.” Dean’s shrug is eloquent, his smirk knowing. On the first sip, his eyes slide shut and the smirk shifts to something close to animal pleasure. Raylan closes his own eyes to remove the temptation to follow the shine down Dean’s throat with his tongue.

But when he opens them again, he’s distracted from a vision of Dean on his knees by the faded gingham apron hanging on a hook beside the white enamel-fronted Frigidaire.

Shit.

Truth is, any other time, Raylan would be up for it—way up. But they’re sitting in his Aunt Addie’s kitchen, where he hasn’t been in years and where the old iron stove and the chipped Red Rooster plates on the sideboard and the gouge in the countertop he put there carving pumpkins when he was ten remind him every goddamn minute both why he left Harlan to begin with and why he should’ve come back to visit more than he did.

Helen had told him Addie’d had a stroke, near as anyone could tell. Beevo Elkton, the grocer in Rhimer’s Holler, had found her on the floor the afternoon he’d come with her weekly delivery. She’d been alive but unconscious, and even when she’d regained a little bit of light in her eyes, she’d never come all the way back from wherever she’d gone when she’d fallen.

Raylan guesses it’s a small mercy. The woman he’d known would have hated relying on the kindness of strangers, hated having her privacy violated in every way that matters by nurses and orderlies and interns.

Still, regret is making inroads on exhaustion, and the last thing he feels like is fucking around under her roof.

“Yeah, about that…” he starts, but Dean throws up a belaying hand.

“You look like shit, and I haven’t slept in two days. Why don’t you show me where I can stay in this backwater and we’ll get breakfast or something in the morning?”

Raylan wonders if Dean is trying to save face in case of rejection or if he’s picked up something of Raylan’s mood. He knows he’d rather it was the former, but he suspects it’s the latter, and that makes him both uncomfortable and strangely touched.

“No need to go anywhere. Addie’s got an extra bedroom in the back. It isn’t much, but it’s got a bed, so I guess it’ll do.”

“That it will.”

When that’s settled, they fall into a companionable silence, broken only by the slosh of more shine into the glasses and the muffled drone of the pump kicking in.

Eventually, Dean says, “So, I take it Miss Addie won’t be back tonight?” Raylan notices the honorific and appreciates it, even if he won’t say so. Then he shakes his head and tries to keep the maudlin expression from his face. He suspects he fails by the fleeting gleam of sympathy he catches in Dean’s eyes.

“My Aunt Addie died a few days ago. Funeral was today.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. Last thing you probably needed was the boogety-boogety.”

Raylan laughs. “Better than the Boyland brothers tweaked out of their minds and fighting dogs. Again.”

“This definitely ain’t Kansas,” Dean answers, apparently a non sequitur, but by the sudden haunted expression that passes over his face and the way he clunks his jelly jar down decisively just thereafter, Raylan guesses it had a particular meaning he’s missing.

“I think I’m ready to turn in.” There’s not the remotest hint of a leer in the words, and Raylan discovers he’s a little disappointed. Deciding that denial is the better part of drunkenness, he rises, shows Dean the bathroom, gets him a towel, and then points to the darkened door of Addie’s guest room.

“You want me to light the lamp?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Dean says, grabbing his duffel from the living room and pulling a Maglite from it.

“Alright, then. You need anything…” Raylan trails off with a gesture toward Addie’s bedroom door, directly across from the guest room.

“’night.”

“’night,” Raylan returns. He staggers into Addie’s room, toes off his boots and drops his hat on the bureau, and then catches himself just before he’d been about to let his body fall backwards onto the bed. “Right,” he mutters, remembering his shoulder. He eases down instead, squirms carefully to find a position his body will allow, and is asleep before the pipes in the bathroom stop banging.

The first thing he feels when he fumbles into consciousness is a steady, dull throbbing in his shoulder.

The next thing he notices is that he’s not alone. Even before he opens his eyes, he knows he’ll find Dean leaning in the doorway. What he doesn’t expect is that Dean is naked except for boxers and socks.

Remembering their last meeting, he searches out the puckered scar of the bullet hole he himself had put in Dean, eyes widening when they take in the unmistakable print of a man’s hand in an ugly red weal on Dean’s shoulder.

“You okay?” he asks, trying to put more into the question than the words themselves can manage.

“I was about to ask you the same question,” Dean deflects.

Raylan screws his face up into a questioning look and Dean chuffs out a laugh. “You look like you went six rounds with a freight train.”

“I’d only need one,” he bluffs, trying to sit up without putting any pressure on his aching shoulder. Changing his tone, he asks his original question a different way, “You need something?”

Dean shrugs himself upright and takes a cautious step into the room. The hesitance in his gait is belied by a certain look in his eyes.

“Let me help you out of that,” Dean offers as Raylan struggles to take off his shirt.

He swallows a hiss as Dean moves his bad arm, and Dean whistles low at the bruise spreading over most of his shoulder. Raylan cranes his neck to take in his back but can’t quite manage the motion. Pain knifes up his neck and he stills.

On a shaky breath, he says, “I don’t know if I—“ 

He’s interrupted by Dean dropping to his knees and nudging Raylan’s legs apart with insistent hips.

Dean’s already got his belt, button, and zipper undone before Raylan recollects himself. “What’s the hurry?”

His mouth tastes like he’d swallowed corpse ash and his head is pounding in counter-time to the throbbing in his shoulder. He’s not in the best shape for this. Even so, a gift like Dean on his knees isn’t the sort of thing he’d usually turn down. Twice, actually.

Except…

Touching Dean’s jaw brings his face up, a flash of defensiveness replaced by the smooth good-time guy Raylan’s met before. He didn’t believe it then, either.

“What’s going on with you?”

And maybe he shouldn’t ask. Maybe he’s misread the need in Dean’s hands, the way his breath shakes out of him as he drops his head and lets Raylan ghost a hand through his hair, a gesture more about comfort than sex.

Things have never been tender between them, and when it comes to it, they don’t know each other well enough for questions of this kind.

Still, he asks again. “Dean?”

Dean raises his head, and Raylan follows the back of his skull with his fingers until his hand comes to rest on the nape of Dean’s neck. The look in Dean’s eyes, an abrupt self-betrayal, momentary but captured by the way it makes Raylan’s heart stutter and jump—that look: anguish, regret, something darker, a mortal pain—demands reaction, and he pulls Dean into him, to rest against his chest, wraps his arms around him and holds on.

It’s the girliest thing he’s ever done, but judging by the tremor in Dean’s body, the way his breath is gusting erratically along Raylan’s throat, it was the right thing, too.

Predictably, Dean breaks the contact first, using his tongue against Raylan’s throat in a truly lewd way to refocus his attention, his hands dropping from Raylan’s back to knead his thighs, thumbs sliding into the crease to either side of his cock, still trapped behind a layer of cloth.

Raylan knows he’s gotten all the revelation Dean’s going to give him, and the heat of Dean’s hands, the strength of his body between his spread legs, the wet urgency of his tongue at the corner of Raylan’s mouth, prying it open to slide between his teeth—it’s too much for his fragile resistance, too much for his hungover, grief-addled brain to handle.

When Dean moves his hand to cup Raylan through his briefs, Raylan forgets his sore shoulder and pounding head and surges upright, shoving Dean back on his heels and giving himself room to shimmy awkwardly out of his jeans and the rest and leaving his half-hard cock bobbing in Dean’s face.

Dean licks his lips reflexively, glances up the long line of Raylan’s body, and then sits up to take Raylan in his mouth.

The inferno of Dean’s mouth and the wicked writhing of his tongue wring a cry out of Raylan, dizzy him so that he sits abruptly on the edge of the mattress, overbalances, and his bad arm refuses to support him, so he ends up in a sprawled mess, pain bringing a shout from him as his shoulder hits the bed.

Dean snugs back into the vee of his legs and resumes sucking, one finger sliding backward toward Raylan’s hole, the other hand tracing lines along his ribcage until landing on and tweaking a peaked nipple.

It’s a sensory assault, and Raylan’s having trouble sorting out the sensations until Dean slides a dry, questing finger inside of him and focuses every ounce of attention on that tight, not quite pleasant feeling. When Dean’s mouth abandons his cock, leaving him wet and cold in the still air, Raylan tries not to whine, a wasted effort as Dean’s tongue rings his intruding finger and arrows in alongside it.

Raylan’s corresponding shout can probably be heard in Lexington.

After that, it’s a blur of feelings—a desperate surge of desire as he helplessly thrusts onto Dean’s finger; a heavy, hot hand holding him down by the belly when Dean doubles the action and scissors inside of him; an impossible, breathless crest of ecstasy when Dean’s mouth sucks his orgasm from the head of his cock; a vertiginous ringing in his ears, black surging at the edge of exploded vision, and from a distance a satisfied masculine chuckle.

“You’re still wearing your socks,” Dean observes when Raylan finally manages to pry his eyes open. The pain in his head has been wrapped in post-orgasmic batten, and even Dean’s teasing tone can’t raise any reaction besides a blissed-out, probably stupid smile.

He swivels his head enough to see that Dean has shucked his boxers and is sitting beside him, one knee up on the bed, a blatant display of Dean’s unsatisfied need within easy distance of Raylan’s reaching hand. He takes Dean’s length in a firm grip, smoothes his palm over the head, gathering the moisture that beads there, and slides back down, releasing him when he reaches the thickest part so that he can coax the tender flesh behind Dean’s cock and then cup his balls.

Dean groans, shifts, throws his weight back onto his hands, and urges Raylan to greater pressure with a bumping upward of his hips.

It’s awkward this way—lying down, left-handed—and he wishes he had his good arm back in working order. But Dean isn’t complaining as Raylan breaks off the action long enough to shove himself upright and get a better purchase.

Dean’s cock is solid, smooth, and hot, a feeling Raylan has always equated with the potential power of a gun, and the idea excites him, like it always does, especially when he feels the way Dean answers the sensation, jumping in his hand and shifting instinctually into his touch. The brush of wiry hair against the back of his hand as he makes the downward sweep, the breathy sound Dean releases when he slides back up to the head, the surprised shuddering under his lips when he leans forward and takes Dean’s nipple in his mouth, all of it makes him wish he were fifteen years younger and could be ready again right now.

He wants to lay Dean back against the pillows and slide between his legs. He wants to drive home and feel Dean ripple apart underneath him.  
Since he can’t have that, he settles for making it as good as he can this way, working his hand faster, tightening his grip enough to pull a sound of need from Dean that morphs into a bark of surprise when Raylan bites down on the tight pink bud between his teeth at the same time he thumbs the slit of Dean’s cock.

Dean spills over Raylan’s wrist, jerks his hips upward urgently, and then collapses onto his back, blowing like a spent horse. It’s Raylan’s turn to laugh like he’s won something, and Dean flips him a weak bird before returning once more to his imitation of a wet rag.

Raylan eases down onto his back, ignoring the sticky fluid drying on his wrist in favor of the hint of heat radiating from Dean’s bent leg, scant inches from Raylan’s good shoulder.

“Shower?” he croaks at last, and Dean makes a noise that might be a yes, muffled as it is by the arm he’s thrown over his face.

Aunt Addie’s only concession to the twentieth century—never mind the twenty-first—had been the installation of indoor plumbing when Raylan was fifteen, but that hadn’t extended to the claw-foot monster taking up the bulk of the bathroom’s floor. The shower head attaches by a snaky chrome hose to the faucet. They step into the tub, enamel cold under their feet, and Raylan pulls the plain white plastic curtain around them on its chrome ring.

It’s snug and safe behind the curtain, the golden glow of the weak sun through the tiny bathroom window and the muted gleam of the oil lamp on the shelf over the commode softening their shadows and making of their bodies topographic maps—plains and hills Raylan thinks he might explore until the world ends or the hot water tank runs dry (fair bet on which comes first, though given Dean’s game, you never know).

Their motions are surprisingly chaste as they clean each other and themselves, touches almost too reverent at the places where their lives have been violently compromised, and Raylan is relieved when a soap-slick hand runs between his legs and grips him. He returns the favor until they’re leaning against each other, feet spread to keep them from slipping on the old tub’s treacherous bottom, their hands working frantically, mouths open in identical, wet gasps that give way to cries of completion.

They step out of the tub on shaking legs, towel themselves off and shuffle into separate bedrooms to get dressed.

Raylan gets to the kitchen first and fires up the stove, coffee already percolating in the old enamel pot on one wide, black burner when Dean steps into the room. This is the first morning after they’ve had, and Raylan thinks it should be awkward. That it’s not makes him more nervous than relieved.

Then Dean says, “Thanks,” his voice still gruff, eyes still tired, and Raylan nods and touches him on the shoulder to turn him toward the same seat he’d occupied the night before.

“Eggs?” he asks, like he makes breakfast for Dean every day, an idea that shoots a sudden thrill of joy adulterated by a healthy streak of fear through him. God, he really is turning into a woman.

But one thing has always been true of Raylan Givens: He knows when he’s lying to himself and is perfectly fine with it, self-deception as much about survival as good aim and a great hat. So as he cracks eggs into the skillet and scrambles them with a fork, as he listens to Dean commenting on trivialities—the weather, the likelihood of finding a replacement belt in this part of the country, Raylan’s culinary skills—he tells himself this is just two fuck buddies having breakfast.  
If later, shared dishwashing done and goodbye back-slaps already exchanged, Raylan has to stop himself from inviting Dean to stay a few days, well, he tells himself he’s too busy and anyway Dean’s got to meet someone in Michigan.

That lie lasts until Dean pauses with his hand on the open driver’s side doorframe and leans into Raylan’s space, stopping like he’s not sure what’s gotten into him and then throwing away caution with a rebellious look that steals Raylan’s resolve and his breath both.

The kiss lingers, tentative tongues and bolder teeth and panting breaths, until he’s fighting the urge not to grab Dean and throw him against the car, fuck the misting rain that’s already falling or the possibility of someone spying on them from the tree-line or the road.

Dean pulls away first, slides into the car and closes the door before Raylan’s quite recovered his balance, and starts the engine, drowning out any damning thing Raylan might say next. He sketches a wave as Raylan takes a step back, and Raylan returns the gesture with a wave of his own.

Once the ghost of the Impala’s growl has died out, leaving only lingering exhaust on the damp mountain air, Raylan trudges toward Addie’s front door, struck suddenly by an almost paralyzing loneliness as he considers that this cabin and this mountain and the whole damned state are always going to have a part of him he’ll never be able to take away from here.

Inside, where he strips the beds and tries not to think about anything, the gaping loneliness changes into an abiding sense that he’s let something get away. Since regret’s just one of the thing a Givens has to get used to, it’s a less bitter pill to swallow, though it still catches in his throat on the way down.

It’s only as he’s putting on his hat that he finds it—a plain white business card, penciled number slightly blurred, note on the back that says, “Any time.” No name, nothing else to indicate who it is he’ll get if—when—he dials the number.

At once a little less lonely and a little more unsure of things, Raylan puts the card carefully in his wallet, packs his gun on his off hip, and closes up Addie’s cabin, ruthlessly letting go of a sense that some era in his life is coming to an end forever.

Once in his rental car and back on the main road, he relaxes, turns on the radio, and waits for someone else’s longing and grief to spill out and fill in the distance he’s putting between himself and what used to be.


End file.
